Binders for Brewers

Atlanta is the home of a few of us bloggers and online card people. Dayf of Card Junk and I both live on the north side of Atlanta, and to be fair, both of us spend a lot of free time (and probably some not-so-free time) on Twitter too. He's @CardJunk and I'm @OffHiatusBBC. 

We met up today at the twice-monthly card show on Windy Hill Road in Atlanta and did a little trade off: I got Brewers cards, and he got binders and pages from that massive bunch of binders that I got from my in-laws for Christmas.

He's been documenting his side of the swap on Twitter.  Here's a photo of his car trunk with the binders in it:

Thanks to @OffHiatusBBC I'm set for binders for at least a couple months pic.twitter.com/NBPbbAmpn5

— Space Combat Junkie (@CardJunk) February 7, 2016

I also grabbed a stack of the pages that were in the binders and brought them along as well.  So, what did I give up? Here's the totals:

final total from @OffHiatusBBC - 32 binders and 417 pages

— Space Combat Junkie (@CardJunk) February 7, 2016

I am just happy that these binders and sheets are not heading to Waste Management, to be fair. I have probably another 50 binders left -- some of which I'll be using -- and I have at least another 1500-2000 pages left. Again, I'll use some of those, but I'll probably trade more of them to Dave at some point in the future.

And, why wouldn't I trade some to him when I get such great stuff in return? Like some Milwaukee Braves:



I get so tied up with trying to stay organized in my Brewers that my Milwaukee Braves collection's organization is somewhat lacking. I need to get more organized on cards issued after the Braves moved from Milwaukee. I have a bunch that need to get into binders and be organized properly. The Hank Aaron from 1999 reminds me of that. The other cards are great additions to my player collections or, perhaps, that neglected post-Milwaukee move group of Braves.

But the Braves were just the tip of the iceberg, because, as Dave put it, "When I saw Bowman, I started cleaning out stuff for you."



Dave was not kidding about that, pretty clearly! This highlights my lack of Bowman from about 1993 to about 2009 or so, I guess -- which coincides well with the cards readily available at the local card show, not coincidentally at all.

Surprisingly, though, there were more cards besides all those. Seriously. The newest one:



Ryan Braun is grimacing as he's about to slide on his own name, wondering why the word "Perspective" is floating around behind him on the basepaths. In all seriousness, this subset is filled with good photos. 

I don't know what differentiates it from the good photos you get with Stadium Club, though, nor do I understand how this photo of Braun sliding into third has anything to do with the "perspective" on the back of the card -- which highlights Braun's solo homer on September 6, 2015 making him the first Brewer with 7 or more seasons of 25 homers or more. I'd have liked this card more if the photo matched the "perspective" on the back: either show me Braun hitting the homer, or tell me what the story of this play is. 

Okay, the "get off my damn lawn" portion of this post is done. On to happier things.



First is this 1998 Topps "Minted in Cooperstown" parallel of Mike Fetters. I blame that 1984 Nestle set for begetting cards like this.



Dave even found a Robin Yount card that I need. I have the other Yount from this Topps Woolworth set from 1990, but I didn't have this one. That's a total win in my book. 

Finally, Dave found a bunch of Paul Molitor cards that I did not have:



That is my first Pacific Prism. To think that Panini feels the need to go with the aluminum foil versions of "Prizms" every year...now, obviously, that's to distract from the lack of logos and all. But, if we're going for distracting designs, no one did it better than Pacific.

Dave, thanks a ton for all these great cards. I know you're a big time "Brony", so in honor of that...

Remember everyone: You've Got to Share, You've Got to Care!

Cards From The Other World

A few weeks back, I had a little extra time at work one morning to enjoy my second cup of coffee and casually read through some blogs.  From time to time, I scroll through other blog rolls to try to find new blogs that I don't otherwise read.  In that way, I finally came across a long-time blogger, Dan from The Other World.  

Dan was in the midst of a spring cleaning of sorts.  He put out a call on his blog for people to claim a division.  Seeing no one had grabbed the NL Central, I commented and asked for them.  Then I forgot about that.  

Somewhere around mid-May, a box showed up at my house from Dan. Having forgotten about my comment, I started going through the cards. The first team I saw were Cardinals, and I thought to myself, "did someone send these to me as a joke? Or a mistake? Was I hacked?"

Okay, I really didn't think I was hacked. 

Then the light bulb went on, finally, and I recalled everything. Thankfully, the cards that Dan sent to me are very memorable and filled some big gaps in my collecting.

Such as, early 2000s Bowman:

Any package that contains a Callix Crabbe (middle name: Sadeaq) has to be a good one.  Crabbe was selected out of junior college by the Brewers in the 2002 draft in the 12th round.  He got a brief chance to play in the major leagues when the San Diego Padres selected him in the 2007 Rule 5 draft. He failed to impress, and his career went back down the minors after that.  But come on -- Callix??

Strikingly, all of these minor league guys got chances to play big-league baseball.  Salome got three at-bats in 2008, Pember got a start in his four appearances in 2002, Komatsu appeared with St. Louis and Minnesota in 2012, and Logan Schafer is still in the Brewers system.  Of all of the minor league guys, Mike Adams may have had the longest career -- 3 years in Milwaukee, parts of four seasons in San Diego, parts of two seasons in Texas, and two years in Philadelphia before coming to the end of the road at age 35 last year.

There were other cards that I needed for PCs and the team collection as well.  Such as one final Bowman -- a Lucroy rookie:

A couple of Greg Vaughns -- a Fleer insert and a Flair checklist:

And even a Rickie Weeks 2011 Topps Update All-Star card:

The two biggest highlights from Dan, though, came in small packages:

The Braun framed A&G relic is interesting. I had one of these already, but the swatch of fabric in the card is pure white.  This one is gray.  I'm calling that a short-print variation.

I am joking, by the way.

The other card is a pink mini Parallel of Mike Fiers -- serial numbered out of twenty-five!  

Dan, thank you very much for the cards.  I'll do my best to distribute those Pirates, Cardinals, Reds, and Cubs around the blogosphere and, more to the point, I promise that this weekend your return envelope will be filled!

Thanks for being patient.